Tim mentioned a good Christian philosopher (seems to be Catholic) on the problem of evil and I completely forgot. Posting to recollect so I can watch. Thanks!

Many atheists bring up the PoE as a point for them on the overall debate. However I ask what model they follow that would suggest an amount of suffering that is overcome able? As I see it if random chance is the thing at play, then a world with no suffering, a world with insurmountable suffering, and a world like ours are equally as likely. Wouldn't this actually turn the PoE in our favor?

@Tim Howard feel free to smite me for the ping. Idk what the rules are here yet but I was hoping to get some feedback. (Sorry its long) I feel like im missing something here and I cant figure out if im just wrong or im just getting in my head about this. I also might not be unique in this and im just wrestling with an already established thing from Sijuwade. I dislike divine psychology, and try to avoid it as much as possible. But in my discussions about the PoE I always find that I end up having to do divine psychology when trying to do an axiological shift in the conversation. My usual chain of infrence is like this- God is the sole fudamentalia for existence. -> God Created us -> created things have a purpose -> there is a stance independent purpose to our existence, that being, to be persons with fully actualized eudimonic psychological axiologies. I recently came across 3 axiologies regarding goodness from Joshua Sijuwade. From my understanding he uses them to express why God would create, but I think if I take a page from rasmussen's book I can take it even further using his composition principle. I think it might be superior way to go about this without having to resort to divine psychology. The 3 axiologies are: Goodness: All possible entities have goodness to a certain degree Diffusiveness: goodness is necessarily diffusive of itself. Potentiality: No genuine potentially can remain unfulfilled. These three together, assuming I am applying them correctly, could entirely solve the issue. If God is the fundamentalia for the universe, it would have diffusive goodness from him, and if all potential goodness must be accomplished and exists at least at some point, then eudimonic psychology axiologies such as virtue and meaning must exist, finally, virtue and meaning logically entail suffering in order for them to be accomplished. So Goodness, Diffusiveness, and Potentiality ⊨ the existence of suffering.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the moral problems that the Bible often presents. When this topic comes up, the first thing that comes to mind is God’s command to kill the Canaanite children, and although many apologists like William Lane Craig have tried to argue that such an act was morally correct, the most adequate response is to affirm that the text is a hyperbole that does not imply that children actually died in the conquest. However, that problem can be transferred to the flood that occurred in the time of Noah, and although it can also be applied to other cases (such as the death of David’s newborn son or Sodom and Gomorrah), this is simply the clearest example that comes to mind. I want to carry out a process that I like to call “evaluation of theodicies under restricted conditions.” I’ve been thinking about this and I cannot find any that are truly satisfactory, and many of them simply seem like attempts to avoid facing the real problem and to downplay it. I would be especially interested in hearing new responses or stronger versions of existing ones, because so far none seem successful to me. First, I want to clarify the framework I am assuming in order to avoid answers that change the playing field. 1. The flood in the Book of Genesis corresponds to a real historical event (although possibly regional rather than global). 2. The event was caused or intentionally brought about by God. 3. God is morally perfect and omnipotent. 4. The flood was carried out as a punishment for human beings. 5. Children below a certain age do not have full moral responsibility, and therefore are not guilty of wrongdoing. 6. No one who is morally upright would want to kill innocent children when there is a way to avoid it. Under these conditions, I am evaluating theodicies with a very specific criterion: is the flood morally justifiable? The focus of this post is on children because it is easier to empathize with children than with animals or plants, since although they share innocence, there is debate about whether they have souls, suffer, or even consent to death, but the argument could also be extended to them.

If you want a high level dialogue on the PoE, please watch this.